Why Everything Is Sold Out
All summer, I tried to buy things, and mostly I failed. I signed up for two separate wait lists for out-of-stock black spandex bike shorts, which I needed for the Peloton I had bought, itself back-ordered for two months. I also added my email address to a wait list for curtain rods, remembering how the shifting fall sun broils the kitchen table that’s now my office. When word from Bed Bath & Beyond came weeks later to let me know they were back on sale, I was too slow on the draw—they sold out about as swiftly as hand sanitizer did in March. Over the weekend, I believed I had acquired replacements for my worn-out bed linens, but my email receipt contained a confession: The sheets would arrive, at best, around Halloween.
When I asked Steve Rowen, a managing partner at the retail-analytics firm Retail Systems Research, if these inventory problems were as widespread as my personal frustrations suggested, he had to stifle a laugh before answering me: “Absolutely.” Similar problems currently dog all kinds of retailers, and they have for months. At the beginning of
